CRITICAL LEGAL THINKING
LAW AND THE POLITICAL
CRITICAL LEGAL THINKING
LAW AND THE POLITICAL
The Outframe: How International Law’s Core Excludes Its Margins
International law is frequently represented as universal, neutral, and inclusive; however, from its inception, it has been influenced by, and primarily serves, a limited group of states historically categorised as "civilised.” This hierarchy is subtly embedded in foundational instruments such as Article 38(1) (c) of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) Statute, which prioritises norms established by this elite community and positions them as globally applicable. Consequently, the outcome is not an impartial legal framework, but rather a curated paradigm, one that delineates legitimacy, marginalises the peripheral, and consolidates authority through exclusion. Nevertheless, legal considerations extend beyond the confines of this framework. Outside of it exists what may be termed the Outframe: a juridical realm occupied by states, peoples, and principles that are regarded as unworthy of full acknowledgement. The Outframe does not represent lawlessness or absence; instead,...
ANNOUNCEMENTS
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ARTICLES
London Book Bloc
On this day, despite the protests, the plan to raise the cap on tuition was carried by 323 votes to 302. Like the Wu Ming in Italy, would anyone like to have a go at summarising a message of protest from the names of the books on their shields? Feel free to use the...
The Life and Death of the University
In the last few weeks, much emphasis has been placed on the impact that the unprecedented increase in tuition fees will have on the life of the university and, beyond the university’s boundaries, on the life of future students themselves. But oddly it seems that the...
The state of kettling
Kettling is a terrible tactic both for those caught between the police lines, and for those who fear such a fate. But perhaps rather than attempting to frustrate the strategy through legal means, our plan of action should be to show its incapacity to work on the streets.
Creative subversions: a politics beyond representation in the UK
Britain is not at a cross roads: before us there do not lay routes from which to choose, rather there exists space to command, to commandeer. Recent student uprisings are about much more than cuts, they stand against the eviction of democracy from politics and...
For a Humanities of Resistance
I first realised that there is something strange about the term ‘Humanities’ when as the Director of my University’s Humanities Institute I participated at a meeting to set up a European Consortium of Humanities Centres. Except for the host centre in Utrecht and mine...
WikiLeaks Against Empire: On the Right to Create New History
With the release of the Afghan and Iraq War Diaries earlier this year and the current release of 250,000 confidential US Embassy cables, who at the end of 2010 does not know the name of Julian Assange and the associated website WikiLeaks? Officially launched in 2007,...
On Tactics & The City
In London recently I witnessed an evolution in the tactics of demonstrations. For the first time in my life I saw a demonstration tactically out-manoeuvre the police. Anyone who has attended a demonstration in recent years will be familiar with the police tactic of...
Protest: Wu Ming
It could be interesting to look closely at the classics the students chose to put on their shields. Let’s look at the frontline. Boccaccio’s Decameron, which is about people sharing stories while waiting for the plague to end. Asimov’s The Naked Sun, which is the...
Post-Colonies and Capitalism: Why the Colonial Still Matters
At a recent workshop organised by the Westminster International Law and Theory Centre, Doreen Massey and David Harvey both spoke about space, spatiality, and politics. While there are many significant differences in the intellectual projects of these two sages of...
University of Strategic Optimism: The Tesco Lecture
NOVEMBER 30, 2010 University of Strategic Optimism
Massey v Harvey: The Punch-up that Didn’t Happen
Early in opening discussion at the 'Spatial Justice' workshop, Massey said that those who had come for a punch-up were going to be disappointed, and she was right. While I wasn't blood-thirsty for a Massey Harvey heavy-weight match, along with many others I was...
Looking for Spatial Justice
Where is justice? Or, more precisely, what is the where of justice? For quite some time the elephant in the room of social science’s spatial turn – the formula was only mentioned three times in the last century, as Soja noted – this question has gained significant...
Adikia: On Communism and Rights
1. Back in the Eighties and Nineties, Marxist intellectuals, shaken by the Gulag revelations and the collapse of the communist states, started welcoming human rights. Claude Lefort, Jean-Francois Lyotard, Etienne Balibar and Jacques RancièreClaude Lefort, The...
Re-Post: Political Economy, Lemon Socialism and the New Global Banana Republic
Admin: We think it is important to repost this text from our early days (originally posted in March 2009). The term 'Lemon Socialism' powerfully conveys the sense of socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor. The first decade of the 21st century witnessed two...
University for Strategic Optimism
Inaugural lecture, 24/11/2010 “Welcome to the University for Strategic Optimism, a university based on the principal of free and open education, a return of politics to the public, and the politicisation of public space. As our university buildings are being boarded...
Student protest 24 November 2010 – London
A Poem | The Flag Up High, Horst Wessel feat. Miley Cyrus
So I put my hands up The flag high! The ranks tightly closed! SA march with bold, firm steps. They're playing my song, Comrades shot by the Red Front and reactionaries March in spirit in our ranks. And the butterflies fly away Clear the streets for the brown...
We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families: A Cannibal, Surreal & Subaltern Approach to Human Rights
This paper explores – briefly – four ideas: the concept of the ‘turn to emotions’, the notion of a cannibal theory, legal surrealism and the subaltern perspective on human rights. How we are to think and feel human rights today? This question is situated in a specific...
Manifesto of Legal Surrealism
First Manifesto (1988) The pedagogy of the imaginary: perspectives of late surrealism for legal teaching Not long ago I took part in an academic selection for the chair of Political Science at the University of Buenos Aires. The examining board expressed that it...
An Introduction: Legal Surrealism
We thought it might be an interesting idea of post a number of texts of a legal surrealism. We will publish a series of texts from and on the juridical writings of surrealism. As a jurisprudence it has, essentially, been written out of the canon. However, if time is...
Anthropophagite Manifesto
Only anthropophagy unites us. Socially. Economically. Philosophically. The world's only law. The masked expression of all individualisms, of all collectivisms. Of all religions. Of all peace treaties. Tupy, or not tupy that is the question.1 Against all catechisms....
KEY CONCEPTS
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SERIES / SYMPOSIA
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